Thursday, June 9, 2016

Just Call Me Eponine

Victor
Hugo Wasn’t Around for This One

In the first part of Eli’s Heart, Eli Levin and Krissy Porter
have just reconnected after three years. Through letters and then phone calls
they resume a friendship which seemed to be blossoming into something more but
was brought to an end by his interfering mother. He’s in college in Westchester
County, New York; she’s at a music conservatory in Cincinnati, Ohio. He’s a
brilliant pianist, she’s a voice student.

There is a growing drama on Krissy’s
campus; one of the school administrators is making a power play which is
creating turmoil. He has brought two new faculty members on board for obviously
personal reasons, and in order to provide them with stellar performers in their
studios, he attempts to raid the studios of established faculty members.

Back in the 1950s, when I was a
student at the College-Conservatory of Music in Cincinnati, studio loyalty was
fierce and sometimes fanatical. Your applied music teacher was one of the most
important people in your life. Often students of a teacher referred to them as “Mama”
or “Papa” … my late husband’s excellent voice teacher, Robert Powell, was
highly esteemed and was “Papa Powell.” My teacher, Fenton Pugh, was “Pappy” to
his students.

I’ve had a private studio of my own
since 1979 so have long been on the other side of this. There is a unique bond
between a music teacher and her private students unlike that of a classroom
teacher. There has to be complete trust. Your teacher is asking you to use your
music to share your soul. Music is meant to live, and the finest musicians make
that happen and take audiences with them to beautiful places.

So for this man to use coercion and
intimidation to lure students away from this person who is vital to what they
are attempting to do with their entire lives was a cause for concern, among not
only the student body but among the faculty as well. In addition, some faculty were
threatened with being replaced as directors of various performing groups.

The story is all there in Eli’s Heart, pretty much as it unfolded.
Things came to a head not with an explosion, but with a massive toilet paper
prank one night in December, after this had been simmering since September. We
awoke the next morning to find nearly every tree on the small campus festooned
with toilet paper, and while it was hysterically funny, it woke the board of
directors up to the seriousness of the situation. Music students didn’t toilet
paper trees in those days. We were far too busy practicing our butts off and
dealing with music theory.

A call went out to the student body
via faculty members (who were as disgruntled as we were … the school’s
reputation was at stake, in their opinion, and I think they were correct) for
any student who had specific grievances to speak to the Dean of the school. So
Krissy decided to play advocate, and she circulated throughout the small women’s
dorm, collecting information, writing it all down. She let the Dean of Men know she had this
impromptu document, and was called before the Dean, the Assistant Dean, the
Dean of Men, and the very administrator she was hoping to help unseat.

I know exactly how she felt when she
walked into the Dean’s office and saw those four people sitting there. Krissy …
well, okay, Susan Moore was only a first semester sophomore, and the
consequences could have been bad if this went the wrong way and the bad guy
won. Fortunately, the troops were rallying in the distance in the form of
student body leaders, mostly male graduate students, who surrounded me when I
left the office and after I’d been debriefed, they took over. Okay, Eponine,
you fired the first salvo, now the real
troops have arrived.

What convinced the board that Fred
Smith had to go was the very real threat from both students and faculty that if
he were not removed, we were prepared to not return to school after Christmas
break, and most of the faculty stood with us. I have what I believe was the
only piece of publicity our rebellion received in an article in the
Cincinnati Enquirer from mid-December, 1956, upper left hand corner of the
front page, headlined “Smith Quits, Conservatory Rebellion Ends.”

In part it reads: “Faculty members
said they believed the resignation will end the turmoil among both students and
teachers who had demanded Mr. Smith’s ouster … (Walter) Schmidt,
(president of the board of trustees) confirmed the resignation, but refused
further comment on what he called ‘a student rebellion.’ ‘I won’t say another
word,’ he said. ‘I’ve had enough trouble.’ … ‘It was a case of Mr. Smith going
or there being no more school,’ a faculty member said. ‘The great majority of
both students and teachers were ready to quit and go elsewhere.’”

Eli’s
Heart includes the student resolution presented to the board of trustees
listing our grievances against Mr. Smith (he’s referred to by another name in the
book), which states in part “he has impeded educational
processes by coercion, intimidation, pitting student against student, faculty
against faculty, and deception of the board of directors. The administrator has
sought to use his power and office to satiate his appetite for complete control
and dominance.”

There’s quite a bit about what
actually went on during all this in the book. Krissy was not a rebel by nature,
and for her to jump into the fray as she did showed some strength I don’t think
she realized she had. She had no problem with the men taking the reins after
that first skirmish.

Remember, it was 1956. I have to wonder how something like
this would play out in 2016.

About Me

After growing up in the unique town of Oak Ridge, Tennessee, I went to the College-Conservatory of Music in Cincinnati as a vocal performance major. I met and married a tenor and we had three children, and moved to the Pocono Mountains of Pennsylvania in 1971 where I established a private voice studio and began directing community and high school musical productions. While in Cincinnati I had the good fortune to be on the administrative staff of the Edgecliff Academy of Fine Arts and the Cincinnati Shakespeare Festival.

Here in the Poconos, I directed over eighty musicals from 1984-2015, and had the privilege of seeing many of my private voice students become teachers, professional performers, and most of all, find the joy in using their singing voices.

In 2013 I fulfilled a lifelong dream and wrote my first ever book, a novel entitled HOW I GREW UP, My second novel, ELI'S HEART, was published in June, 2014. My third novel, YOU ARE MY SONG, was released in January, 2015. Novel number four, JAMIE'S CHILDREN, was released in July, 2016, and MEMORIES OF JAKE in March, 2017. MAN WITH NO YESTERDAYS is scheduled to be released on Nov. 11, 2017. My first non-fiction book, "MORE FOG, PLEASE" about my 31 years as a director for community and high school musicals, was released on November 11, 2015.